Remove any given character form any given string

Question

i was trying to make a function that can take a char and a string as arguments and remove that char from the string.

function removeCharacter(char, str) {
    return str.replace(char, '');
}
ex: removeCharacter('r', "character") - > chaacte

Doing this way only removes the first char so I found out about the global Regex, but here is where I hit a wall...how can I make it so it can take any given char something like:

str.replace(/char/g, '')

I want pass that char as an argument in the function and remove all of them. Is there a way to this with regex or should i use a for statement? Or is there a better way?

Refer this : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20769908/remove-specific-char-from-string — TJcobra, Jul 02 '17 at 12:37

ValLeNain · Answer 1 · 2017-07-03T11:10:27.857

3

You can construct a Regexp.

function removeCharacter(char, str) {
    var reg = new RegExp(char, 'g');
    return str.replace(reg, '');
}

[edit]
This answer only works for characters which are not special characters from the RegExp point of view (like '/', '(', '.'). Otherwise it will fail or have unexpected behaviour. cf @Wiktor's answer.

edited Jul 03 '17 at 11:10

answered Jul 02 '17 at 12:31

ValLeNain

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That was what I needed. Thank you very much :) – Alin Faur Jul 02 '17 at 12:37
@AlinFaur: I doubt it is what you need. Try with `(`. – Wiktor Stribiżew Jul 02 '17 at 14:21

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 02 '17 at 14:33

To remove multiple occurrences of a char, you need to use a regex in JavaScript, a regex that is constructed with a g (global) modifier.

However, you can't just use /char/g, you need to declare the regex using a constructor notation, new RegExp(char, "g").

And since some chars are reserved, special regex metacharacters, you must escape them.

So, what you need is

function removeCharacter(char, str) {
    return str.replace(new RegExp(char.replace(/[-\/\\^$*+?.()|[\]{}]/g, '\\$&'), 'g'), '');
}
console.log(removeCharacter("(", "(abc(")); // => abc

Remove any given character form any given string

2 Answers2